Assam has given Narendra Modi a breather. It is now up to him to make full use of the time he has got to recover from last year’s drubbings in Delhi and Bihar, and brace for the battles in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Goa next year.
Assam was a low-hanging fruit for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by an octogenarian who couldn’t keep his house in order as the politically damaging departure of an able lieutenant, Himanta Biswa Sarma, from the Congress showed.
Uttar Pradesh will be different as the BJP will come up against the feisty Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), who expects to cash in on the anti-incumbency sentiments against the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP).
In Punjab and possibly in Goa, the Aam Admi Party (AAP) will make its debut outside of Delhi with its usual hyperbole. Again, the task will not be easy for the BJP, which tends to be thrown off balance by Arvind Kejriwal’s rhetoric skirting the thin line between insult — the prime minister is a psychopath, he once said — and defamation. Only in Gujarat can the BJP expect to hold its own because, for one, its opponent will be a Congress licking its wounds from a series of defeats.
For another, Modi’s home state can be expected to stand by him even if his successor as chief minister, Anandiben Patel, hasn’t been a roaring success. What the battles against the BSP, SP and AAP underline is the Congress’s absence as the BJP’s main adversary. It is not a Congress-mukt Bharat yet, as the BJP’s provocative slogan about ridding India of the Congress proclaims.
But the political scene appears to be evolving in that direction as the mother-and-son duo of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi appears clueless about ways to revive the party. But there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip. The BJP will need at least the victories in Gujarat and Goa to justify its slogan since UP and Punjab are tough nuts to crack, the latter being hobbled by the misrule of the father-and-son combine of Prakash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Singh Badal.
To advance towards the objective of decimating the Congress, therefore, the BJP has to be far more politically savvy than it has been till now. Since Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the BJP’s victory in Assam underlines a popular rejection of the politics of obstructionism practiced by the Congress, Modi will have to reach out to possible allies in order to push through the partially stalled economic reforms.
